


Sun Must Set To Rise

by mirrorstone



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Chrom is a good leader, Emmeryn does not make it in this one sorry, Everyone is lowkey poly, F/M, Multi, Sumia please hold me in your strong muscular arms, and my wyvern headcanons, badass Sumia, everyone is sad, wyverns are here too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23842345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirrorstone/pseuds/mirrorstone
Summary: When the Shepherds' attempt to save Emmeryn goes disastrously wrong, everyone is left shaken in the aftermath. Chrom nearly loses his tactician in the desperate retreat, and realizes that he's not willing to let her slip through his fingers again. Achilles realizes that she's willing to give up everything to keep them all safe.The Shepherds won't let their tactician make that sacrifice if there's anything they can do about it. Somehow, battered and scarred but still determined, they'll come through it together.
Relationships: Chrom/My Unit | Reflet | Robin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	1. Chapter 1

There was rain pouring down on the battlefield. The skies had been clear during Emmeryn’s sacrifice (she’d been golden and white against the blue, her words ringing out so clear, and when she fell- don’t think about that.) But as much wind magic as Aversa’s mage corps had released to slaughter the Pegasus Knights who’d come to save her did strange things to the weather. It seemed fitting. The way it muffled sound and turned the world cold and grey mirrored their state of benumbed sorrow. Sumia was sobbing. Cordelia was silent, staring at the reins held in her tight fists. Achilles could see the same thought going through both of their heads nonetheless; I should have saved her. It was the same refrain that repeated in her own thoughts.

Chrom was surveying the battlefield that should have been their escape route with a sort of grim fervor.

“We’ll pay them back for the Exalt’s life,” he said, raising his voice to fight the howling wind. “We’ll kill them all, every last one of them! If this is how they choose to repay her sacrifice then so be it! We’ll slaughter them to the last man, we’ll- we’ll…” He trailed off, voice breaking. “Gods, I sound like my father.” He looked towards Achilles, hopelessly beseeching, and she saw mirrored in that expression the face of a boy who had reached out to an idolized, and then feared, father too many times for comfort and been refused. And damn propriety, she couldn’t refuse him this, so she opened her arms silently and he fell into them. (This might be the last chance she got to hold him- don’t think about that either.)

“I’m sorry,” he murmured into her hair. “I’m not- Em wouldn’t have wanted… Gods, Em!” If the word came out as a sob, it was too muffled for anyone but her to hear.

“You’re a better man than that, Chrom,” she said softly. “You’re not- you’re not anyone but yourself. A good man, and a good commander, and a good brother. You’ll carry on your sister’s legacy.”

“Prince Chrom!” Sumia landed her pegasus in a rush of wings, her eyes still red rimmed from tears and her voice close to a sob, but her expression schooled to military discipline. “I did an aerial reconnoiter of the battlefield and his troops they’re… they’re deserting left and right. The squad here’s only stayed out of loyalty to their commander. He offered them the chance to go but said he had to stay, that the mad king would slaughter his wife and children if he deserted...”

Chrom reluctantly pulled away from Achilles, looking up at Sumia. (She wondered if he’d ever known about his pegasus knight’s crush on him, obvious to everyone but the prince. Sumia had never shown any bitterness, never been anything but kind and a friend to her, and if they died here he would never know that she- stop thinking.)

“Thank you, Sumia. Achilles, give the order. As much mercy to his troops as we can manage.”

“Yes sir.” She pulled back too, and the stolen moment with the prince she loved in her arms was gone. They were once again a commander and his tactician. But he didn’t let go entirely, hand still on her shoulders, concern in his eyes at he looked at her.

“Achilles, are you alright? You’re shaking. And I've never seen you this pale.”

“I’m upset, I’m sure all of us are-“

“Achilles, that’s magic exhaustion!” Sumia burst out. “I should have noticed it before- You fought like a demon earlier, you must have drained yourself nearly dry!”

“I’ll manage-“

“You could die from this without taking a single wound!” Sumia burst out, looking frantically to Chrom. “Chrom- Commander, you can’t let her fight like this.”

“Achilles-”

“We don’t have a choice,” she interrupted. “Tactician’s not going to be optional in this battle, and I won’t leave any of our troops to die without guidance. I’ll stick to my sword if I’m all out of magic.”

“I… I have something that might help,” Sumia said reluctantly, rummaging through her bag. “They’re for the dark flyers, since magic exhaustion is even more dangerous when you might fall off your pegasus. They’ll keep the exhaustion off, but they don’t replenish your depleted mana reserves, so you shouldn’t try to cast with them.” She pressed a bag into Achilles’ hand, full of little green drops that glowed slightly. “Here. Take one now. You can get one spell per drop, and don’t take more than three in total. Overdose will kill you as surely as the magic exhaustion.” Achilles didn’t hesitate to swallow one, and it burned all the way down.

“Thought you told me not to use any magic?” she asked, voice already stronger.

“I did, and you shouldn’t, but I know you. You won’t hesitate to act if you see someone’s life in danger, even at the cost of your own. Even when I wish you wouldn’t. So I’m telling you, you’ve only got two shots. Make them count.”

“I will.” Achilles tucked the bag into the pocket inside her coat. “Thanks, Sumia.”

Sumia hesitated a moment, then darted in and hugged her tightly, holding her with the strength she never seemed to realize she had.

“Stay safe. Please,” she whispered into her ear. And then she stepped back, and just like before the stolen moment was over, and they were once again soldier and tactician. “What are your orders, sir?’

“I need you to take me up, so I can get a look at the field.” She held out a hand, and Sumia hoisted her up onto the pegasus’ back with her. “Chrom, get them moving in an orderly retreat, and we’ll guide you along the best route from the air.” With a word to her pegasus and a flick of the reins, they were airborne again, Sumia wheeling in a wide circle over the battlefield to give Achilles the best tactical view.

“Ah, damn it, there’s Risen on the field already. There were Risen when- earlier, too, almost like Aversa summoned them. I don’t think this is a coincidence. Take me lower, Sumia, I need to address our troops.”

“You got it!” Sumia whistled, seeming to barely even need to touch the reins to get her pegasus to do what she wanted. The troops and shepherds alike were used to being addressed from pegasusback by now. Achilles raised her voice to a battlefield command shout, meant to carry. The winds carried it further.

“Ylisseans! There are Risen on the field, keep your guard sharp! But if your opponent is human, remember Emmeryn’s sacrifice and show mercy! Don’t strike to kill if you don't have to, leave any man who surrenders, and let any man who leaves the field peacefully go in peace!” It was inevitable that some of the Plegians would hear it. She hoped that they wouldn’t take it as incitement to hammer the Ylisseans even harder, thinking them soft. She hoped she wasn't sparing Plegian lives at the cost of Ylissean lives. But Emmeryn had given her life for the hope of a better world, and Chrom was still trying so hard to make something better in her name. Besides, this was a retreat, not a pitched battle. They only had to keep ahead of their enemies, and find or clear a path safely away from here. It hadn't been meant to go this way. They'd come in as a light strike force, who were supposed to fight their way to Emmeryn and escape carried by the pegasus knights. But everything had gone so wrong...

“Sumia, there!” Achilles pointed frantically, to where a group of Risen were surging forward to cut off a pass the Ylisseans had been funneled into. It was strange to see them displaying enough intelligence to take advantage of a choke point like that. Usually they fought mindlessly, substituting viciousness for strategy. She didn't trust this sudden surge of cunning, but there was no time to think more about it. Not with Sumia swooping towards the Risen, lance at the ready, and her own hand on her tome. The magic infused in the pages, normally a comforting hum under her hands, burned like fire rising through her veins, but it was too late to back down now…

The flames roared forward, vicious and uncontrolled, the only outlet she could afford to pour her turbulent emotions into right now. They arced from Risen to Risen and turned the rain into a rising cloud of steam, clearing the way and evening the numbers enough for the Shepherds to carve their way through. Sumia's pegasus rose on the sudden updraft, wings spread to catch it. And then the world tilted suddenly, a wild gust of the mage-disturbed storm wind catching pegasus and rider too fast for them to adjust.

Everything blurred. Achilles was uncertain whether the vertigo was from the winds shoving them uncontrollably, or the sudden loss of the magic that had been staving off her mana drain. She had a faint vision of Sumia grabbing for her, of her own numb hands suddenly too weak to hang onto anything, of the world spinning, and nothing beneath her feet but the rushing wind. It howled in her ears. Or was that laughter? She couldn't tell. Was this how Ememryn had felt? Maybe it was fitting that she should die this way too.

The world coalesced abruptly into something warm and painfully solid under her, all the breath driven out of her lungs as she hit it hard. But not as hard as she’d been expecting.

“'s izzn the groun'...” she muttered dazedly, running a hand over the foreign substance. Leather, worn but well taken care of. Something glossy and black, smooth with a series of overlapping edges. Saddle. Scales. “Minerva?” But no, she could see Minerva off in the distance, wings beating against the wild winds, making her steadfast way to Cordelia and Sumia's desperate pegasi, trying to get into formation behind the wyvern's massive, sheltering wings as some protection against the unnatural gale.

A pair of hands slipped under her arms and pulled her upright, the movement economical but not ungentle, helping her to sit up in the saddle and bringing her to rest against someone's chest. It was only when she noticed how warm they felt that she realized how hard she was shivering.

“I've been called a thing or two by Ylisseans before,” the deep, amused voice came from behind her. “But that's a new one.”

“Mistook you for someone else.” She fumbled for the bag tucked into her coat, thankful she hadn't lost it in the fall. “You caught me.”

“Strange as it may sound, I didn't actually join the army to let helpless women fall to their deaths,” he answered bitterly. Her rescuer (or captor she couldn’t rule that out, she'd be a valuable hostage) didn't stop her when she unlaced the bag of mana drops, painfully slow with clumsy, unresponsive hands, and downed a second one. This one went down less like heat and more like distilled pain, but when she'd blinked away the tears in her eyes and fought back the urge to cough, her hand were already refastening the bag with their usual ease. The wyvern turned his head around, the metal spikes on his war helm narrowly missing her, sniffing for the bag she held.

“Steel, buddy, no. Not for you. You better put that bag away, wyverns think magic tastes great.” She stuffed it hastily back into her coat.

“So, you’re Plegian then,” she said, a little testingly.

“Yeah, you figured it out, huh. So much for my cunning disguise.”

“The big wyvern kind of gives it away, yeah.” She took a deep breath. “So, are we headed back to Aversa?”

“She’s not my commanding officer, so no.”

“Mustafa, then.”

“You seem to know a lot about our chain of command for an Ylissean”

“I think you know who I am,” she said, no longer willing to dance around the topic. She and Chrom’s faces were both known to their enemy nation, and she was too valuable as a potential hostage to ignore.

“I used to think I knew a lot of things.” Back again was that tone of bitterness, of chagrin. “Turned out I was wrong about them. So if I think I recognize some random Ylissean falling off a pegasus, I’m probably wrong about that too.”

“Then… what is this?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t know yet. Maybe we’re still enemies. Maybe we’re not. You tell me, Ylissean. Are we going to fight?” She turned to look over her shoulder at the speaker for the first time. A Plegian soldier, with no marks of rank or anything else to distinguish him, only a broken nose and a wry smile. She didn't recognize his face but there was something familiar in it nonetheless, something she saw every day in the faces of the soldiers she fought alongside, and she relaxed.

“Sure, I always pick fights with the people keeping me in the air.” Achilles punched him lightly in the shoulder. “Take that, Plegian.”

“Agh, we've been hit.” The wry smile lingered as he kicked his heels against the wyvern's sides. The wyvern let out a bellow, that Achilles hoped everyone less familiar with Minerva's playfulness would fail to recognize as overly enthusiastic rather than pained, and spiraled dramatically towards the ground at a speed just short of freefall, slamming into it with a dramatic thud that she would have thought felt like crashing if she didn’t know just how hard a knock wyverns could take. He let out a slightly more subdued groan and flopped to the ground, wings askew, and went still. Achilles found herself grinning, despite everything.

“You taught your wyvern to play dead?”

“Hey, ever since the mad king decreed soldiers weren't allowed to go home to visit family anymore, we had a lot of free time.” He slid off the saddle down to the ground in a fluid, practiced movement, and held a hand up to her. Under any other circumstances she'd have felt insulted that he thought she needed a hand down, but given that he'd just seen her falling out of the sky with all the grace of a sack of potatoes she decided it was warranted just this once. She slid out of the saddle with only slightly more grace this time, and was dismayed to find that her knees buckled as soon as she hit the ground, and that she would have kept going down if he hadn't been holding her up. With surprising tact he turned aside to pat his wyvern's head, giving her a moment to lean against the great scaled side and find her strength again. She walked over to join him once she'd managed.

“What did you say his name was again?”

“Steel. We’re real imaginative here. Here, give him your hand.” He put his own hand under hers when she stretched it out, steadying it. “Steel, hey. This is a friend.” The wyvern snorted at her, the warm dry breath a moment of comfort in the cold damp of the battlefield, and leaned in to butt his head against her chest. It was a gentle gesture for the wyvern, but it nearly knocked her off her feet again, would have if his rider hadn't caught her. She barely noticed it, dreamily reaching out to stroke his muzzle, covered in scales so small and smooth that they were almost soft to the touch. Even Minerva, who was considered quite friendly by wyvern standards, wouldn't have permitted anyone but Cherche to pet her like an oversized cat the way this wyvern did.

“He's so gentle,” she murmured, as the wyvern leaned into the touch with a low rumble of satisfaction that only picked up when his rider's hand joined hers, scratching affectionately around the base of his horns. “I've never met a wyvern who let me touch it like that.”

“You've tried with many wyverns?” he asked, sounding amused.

“Every one I meet,” she sighed wistfully. “They're amazing creatures, but they only really bond with their rider.”

“He's got a big heart.” He paused, and then went on as though determined to get something out. “And he's part of the king's captive breeding program. He was raised by humans, not wild-caught.” Achilles paused as the implications of what he'd told her sunk in, even through the warm glow of satisfaction at getting to pet a wyvern. Ylisse had no native wyvern population, but Cherche had told her a bit about how they'd done it where she came from, when Achilles asked if it might be possible to get a wyvern of her own.

“The bond between a wyvern and rider is sacred,” Cherche had explained, when Achilles had wistfully expressed the desire to ride one herself. “We don't take them from their homes and their flight. Instead we become part of their flight, and only remove them in times of war. When the need is over, we set them free, to live their own lives, and find mates and raise their young. Where flights of wyvern settle, usually in the mountains, their breeding and hunting grounds are set aside as preserves, and we build a temple nearby, who watches over them. They leave out meat for them, that they might come to know humans and feel no fear of us. Any who would become a wyvern rider must meet with the temple's approval. And the wyvern's, of course. In time, with many visits and mutual trust, a bond may form and the wyvern allows itself to be ridden. Why, I still remember my first meeting with my dear Minerva!” she'd chuckled. “There I stood, frozen in place with a rabbit in my hand as an offering, as the most graceful, beautiful, adorable wyvern of them all came right up to me. She opened her jaws wide… and plucked the rabbit out of my hand as gently as could be! I knew then that we were meant to be together forever. But those Plegians… they take the adolescent wyverns and break their spirits until they'll accept any rider. As though wyverns are mere beasts of burden, with no hearts and minds of their own! That's why a Plegian wyvern will always be less loyal and more unpredictable than a wyvern won through trust and love.”

Plegia had an abundant population of wild wyverns, had always been able to field as many as they wanted, but Ylisse had still dominated them in terms of airpower in the previous war. Their wyverns were half-feral, snappish and vicious, and as like to turn on their own rider if they could manage it. Ylisse's pegasus corps may have had less to field in terms of raw power, but they were more disciplined, and a group of them working together could take a Plegian wyvern rider down despite the advantage in size and strength. Or at least, that was how it had been. Chrom had wondered aloud several times how Plegia's wyvern riders had suddenly become so much more effective.

“Wyverns have a lifespan close to a human. They take at least a decade to grow to fighting weight,” she said slowly. Which meant that Gangrel must have started his breeding program as soon as he'd come to the throne, after the treaty had been signed, when Ylisse and Plegia were still ostensibly at peace. Even that far back, he'd been planning this war.

“And they eat a hell of a lot too.” His voice had turned bitter again, and tired. “Our people were starving in the streets, but he was breeding war dragons instead of feeding them. Gangrel's army never went hungry.”

“Is that why you joined?” Achilles asked softly. There was a long pause, and the wyvern shoved his nose up against his rider's chest with a concerned whine.

“I thought I'd be helping our people,” he replied quietly. “The raids on Ylissean villages… they said we'd be taking back the grain they stole from us when they took our lands. Not murdering farmers and burning their homes.” He wrapped an arm around the wyvern's neck, seeking affection as much as giving it. “They said you didn’t really want peace, that you’d break the treaty as soon as you built up your armies again, conquer us unless we struck first. They said… they said a lot of things I used to think were true. This guy's the only reason I'm still here, really. Well, him and old Mustafa. But you can't exactly desert with a two ton wyvern. The king sends out squads to hunt deserters down, and this guy's hard to hide.”

“Come to Ylisse. I could guarantee sanctuary for both of you. You wouldn't have to do this anymore,” she offered. He smiled wryly at her.

“Sure I wouldn't, but how does that help anyone but me?” Before she could answer, they were interrupted by the sound of thundering hoofbeats, coming their way at what had to be a gallop. “Company's coming.”

“Mine, or yours?”

“Yours, Ylissean, who else?”

She could see them now, Sully and Stahl's horses. Sully's destrier was in the rear, with Sully and Stahl riding double, and Stahl's courser carrying Chrom a good three lengths ahead of them. Chrom brought the horse up short in front of them (Achilles and Stahl both winced; Comfrey had a soft mouth and he was clearly just barely tolerating this kind of treatment out of ingrained politeness for his rider.)

“Let her go!” Chrom barked, drawing Falchion threateningly. Achilles took a step forward, her rescuer stepping back with his hands up.

“Chrom, I'm fine. He's not an enemy,” she said reassuring. Without lowering his raised hands, her rescuer sat down on the ground with his back against his wyvern.

“You saw us go down, right? Hit the ground real hard, I'm out cold. Won't be fighting anyone for a while.” Chrom still kept a wary eye on him, holding out his free hand to Achilles, with Falchion never wavering until she was mounted behind him and pushed it back down.

“Hey,” she said, leaning around Chrom for one last word with her rescuer. “Think about that offer. I meant it.” He grinned lazily at her, giving her a sketchy salute.

“See you on the other side, Ylissean.”

“My name’s Achilles. Tell them I sent you.”

“Cato. See you around, Achilles.”

“Cato.” He stilled as Chrom addressed him for the first time. “Thank you for this. I won’t forget it. Whatever Achilles promised you, I’ll back it.”

“Prince Chrom.” He nodded respectfully. “If we meet again, I hope it’s under better circumstances.”

“Don’t die,” Achilles ordered. One last flash of that wry smile appeared, at the only kind of goodbye that really mattered between soldiers.

“Don’t die,” he repeated. A moment later, Chrom kicked the horse into a trot, and they were speeding away, towards their retreat.

“Achilles, I… gods, I thought you were dead!” His voice broke for a moment, and she wrapped her arms around him a little tighter.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to worry you like that.”

“I know. I just...” He drew himself a little straighter. “We're still on the battlefield, I shouldn't be doing this now. The rest of the group is just ahead, there's a pass we're going to escape through to get back to Ylisse. We're lucky that Gangrel's army is defecting en masse. As it is, we've barely gotten through the risen, much less the remaining loyalists. But we're almost there.” They drew level with the group a moment later.

“Achilles!” Sumia had landed, walking her pegasus with the other horses to avoid drawing attention, and she all but galloped to them as they appeared. “I'm so glad you're alright! I thought I- I'd...” Her voice broke, and Achilles saw that her face was still tearstained, her voice ragged as though she'd been sobbing again.

“It was all we could do to keep her from pursuing when that Plegian flew off with you,” Chrom murmured into her ear. “She'd have flown off and tried to fight the wyvern on her own if we hadn't held her down.”

“It wasn't your fault, Sumia. No one could have predicted that the air currents would change so suddenly, and so violently.” Achilles held out a hand, trying to offer Sumia some form of comfort, some symbol that she didn't blame her. Sumia clasped it for a moment, tightly, before the movement of the horses drew them apart.

“I won't fail you again Achilles. We can't afford to lose you.” For a moment her voice rang with steel, a soldier speaking to a commanding officer, and then it broke with emotion again. “I can't afford to lose any more people I care about. So the next time we fly together, I'm tying you to the saddle, okay?” She gave her a watery smile.

“Deal. Now let's get out of here.” Achilles took a deep breath, and raised her voice again to a battlefield shout. “Let's get moving! Riders and lancers on the outside, clear the way through! Chrom, we should give Stahl his horse back, he’s a better cavalry fighter than either of us,” she added in a regular tone of voice.

“Right, of course.” Chrom slid down, and held up his arms for her. She didn't even protest when he swung her down, and managed to only wobble a little when she landed on her feet. “Achilles, are you alright? Should you be walking?”

“I'm fine. And we don't have any spare mounts, so we need everyone who's an effective mounted fighter on what we have.”

“Not that I haven't been enjoying getting to put my arms around Sully!” Stahl said cheerfully. “But it's a little hard to fight this way.”

“You're telling me, how am I supposed to swing a sword with this useless lug hanging onto me like that?” Sully agreed. Stahl reseated himself on his horse, leaning forward to whisper babytalk into its ears that they all pretended not to hear, and the group set forward again. They were getting farther and farther away from the site of the ambush, and Gangrel's assembled troops, and only encountering stray men and wandering groups of Risen now. More soldiers than not were taking a look at them, and deliberately turning away. Achilles made the offer again, to as many as she thought might listen, sanctuary in Ylisse if they would take it. She was starting to hope that they'd make it out without further incident, when Sully whistled a sharp alarm.

“Risen ahead!” she called. “Damn, it looks like this is where they've all been waiting for us. What's the word, Achilles?” Achilles started forward, and swore under her breath when she saw the massed Risen, three, maybe even four, times as many as their own group. Risen didn't do that. They didn't sit and wait for you, they didn't show any sort of tactical thinking. But here they were, and even as she looked they broke into a shambling charge. There wasn't time to wonder about their behavior.

“Mounted and armored units to the front! Break their charge and then peel off, left flank and right flank pincer and hit them from the sides! Don't let them catch you up and force you to engage, stop the momentum and then get the hell out of the way!”

“Achilles, that will leave us wide open-”

“No it won't, because I want the mages up here with me, and I want every melee fighter at our backs. Mages, on my mark we're going to hit them with fire. Pour everything you have into it, this is now or never. Everyone else, we're counting on you to protect us when we drop.”

“Achilles, you're-” Sumia began, but Achilles shook her head.

“We don't have a choice.” She spoke not as Sumia’s friend, but as her commander, and she saw Sumia lift her head and square her shoulders in response, even though her eyes still showed her reluctance. “Get into position now.” Sumia shuffled her pegasus forward without hesitation, side by side with Sully, and leaned forward to whisper something into the ears of both horses that made them prick up their ears and lift their heads, the tired animals pawing at the ground and looking once again eager for the fray. Achilles took the moment to palm the third mana drop and slip it under her tongue as she moved into position between Miriel and Rickon, Chrom taking up a comforting guard position at her back.

Not a moment later their forward ranks charged, and met the ranks of the Risen. The mounted units hit them first, charging into them with the force of an earthquake and laying about with sword and lance, then veering off. The heavily armored units plowed into the risen next, now that their ranks were disrupted, stomping them flat, shouldering them aside, and breaking their cohesion as they waded further into the ranks and disrupted their order. And then, at a sharply whistled signal, the heavy armor pulled back in an orderly retreat while the mounted fighters wheeled in ranks to the left and right, forming up again to charge into their unprotected flanks in a pincer movement that forced them all into a huddled group, then peeling away again. There was a single moment where the Risen were vulnerable, confused, grouped together into a single target, and divided between pursuing their attackers or charging the group in front of them, and into that moment Achilles put a hand on her tome, whose magic pulsed warningly under her fingers, pulled every ounce of power she could muster from it anyway, swallowed the last mana drop, and yelled “Now!”

The mages hit the Risen with a wall of fire, their combined force roaring into an inferno so powerful that it burned the first few ranks of them into nothing but ash and continued forward, leaving charred Risen falling in its wake. The flames she conjured seemed to roar through her as well, the heat and power dragging itself through her veins on its way out, while the drop met it coming out and dragged the flames back down her throat. It was, she thought dazedly, quite possibly the most excruciating pain she remembered ever feeling. Even the hand resting on her tome felt like she'd laid it on a hot iron, as though she was an apprentice foolishly trying to handle a tome too powerful for her. On the plus side, if her plan hadn't worked, then it would be a relief when the Risen finished her off.

“-les! Achilles!” Oh, she was lying on the ground. When had that happened? Chrom was speaking, and she wondered vaguely if he knew how much like a leader he sounded.“-cleared the way but we need to go! Riders, you each need to take a mage, they're all spent but Achilles is worst off.”

“Get her up on Comfrey, she can carry two if one's not armored.”

“No. Give her to me. A pegasus' gait is smoother than a horse, they're best for carrying the wounded.” The world tilted dizzily, before righting itself again. A pegasus' head in front of her, a strong pair of arms around her, and the faint smell of rose-scented soap. Sumia. “Achilles, can you hear me?”

“Sssss.” Her voice wasn't cooperating with her, coming out as a dry hiss. Her throat burned when she tried to speak.

“It's okay, here. Little sips.” Sumia held a water flask up to her lips, tilting it in tiny increments to give her a little bit at a time. The pegasus moved so smoothly under them that it the water never even splashed. When she pulled it away, Achilles tried again.

“I'm nominating you for sainthood when we get back.” Her voice came out cracked and hoarse, but at least it was recognizable. Sumia smiled and put the flask away, wrapping her arms around Achilles' waist to take hold of the reins again.

“Sure, Saint Sumia of tripping over her own feet. Won't I look good as a stained glass panel in a chapel, falling onto my face?”

“I was thinking something more like Our Lady of Salvation. Mounted on a pegasus, lance in one hand and the other outstretched to rescue a lost soul. With roses in your hair.”

“If you want to make me a saint, then you'll have to let us make you one too.”

“Sure, Saint Achilles, patron of lost causes, Lady of Circumstances. Sounds about right.”

“Uh oh.” Sumia's voice was suddenly serious, quiet. “Trouble ahead.” Just lifting her head was an effort, but Achilles managed anyway, and then swore. Laying in perfect ambush, arrayed around the entrance to the pass, was a cohort of Risen, with Aversa at their head. The sorceress was mounted on a winged nightmare, hovering in the air above them, high enough to be well out of reach from any bow or spell.

“Lady of Circumstances, alright,” Achilles muttered to herself. “Soldier’s luck, all bad.”

“But better than none at all,” Sumia murmured back.

“Well well, what have we here? The poor prince's rag-tag army, running away in retreat. And look at that! All your mages are spent! It's lucky for me that you encountered that last wave of Risen to wear them all down, isn't it?” Aversa smiled sharply. “You can only do two things now, can’t you? Let me make this choice easy for you. Hand over the prince and tactician, and I'll let the rest of you escape with your worthless lives.”

“Not a chance,” Chrom snarled, raising Falchion. He held it steady, but Achilles could see his shoulders trembling. They were all at the end of their strength.

“No? You don't believe, me of course. A wise course of action. Well then, let me make it even easier for you,” Aversa purred. “Hand over the tactician, and I'll let you all go. Even you, prince. I swear so by the fell blood of Grima. Even you know that that's one oath the Grimleal never dare to break.”

“No!” Chrom snarled without hesitation. “I would die first!”

“Oh, I promise you, you won't. If you prefer to fight, then I'll be only too pleased to drag the both of you back in chains, bloody and screaming, over the broken corpses of all your friends. You won’t die for a very long time, prince. One last chance.” She raised her voice. “See how cheaply your prince spends your lives? He'd see all of you slaughtered for the sake of a single woman! Come now, hand her over and walk free, by my sworn oath.”

“Sumia, let me down.” Achilles struggled weakly against her hold, as Sumia's arms tightened around her. “I'll go, you don't have to-”

“I let you go once, Achilles, and I'm never doing it again,” Sumia said firmly, raising her voice. “I'm not handing you over, and anyone who wants to will have to go through me to do it!”

“And I,” said Panne, loping over to stand beside the pair of them, in her taguel form even bigger than Sumia's pegasus.

“And Teach is right beside ya! No one's taking away Achilles while I've got her back!”

“Loath as I am to agree with Vaike, he's quite right, darling. Only an unforgivable boor would ever betray her comrades so.”

“Damn right! We're with you too, Achilles, all the way to hell and back.” With Sully and Stahl bracketing them, no one could have dragged Achilles away if they tried. But what rose to meet her instead was a rising tide of yells of assent, the sound of her friends and comrades unanimously calling out their support and defiance, and her vision started to blur as tears threatened to fill her eyes.

“Well Aversa, you've heard our answer!” Chrom yelled out, his voice trained to battlefield command carrying for all to hear. “Now let's have yours!”

“Then here's my answer. Die!” She pointed forward, and the Risen rushed forth in a perfectly disciplined wave, as though they were trained soldiers instead of undead monsters. Their cavalry and armored fighters surged forward to meet them, holding them back with steel and sheer force, but it couldn't hold for long. Not against Risen somehow smart enough to fight like real soldiers, to come forward in a unified wave and focus their force against the weakest targets… Risen being controlled by a guiding force, being granted intelligence that they normally wouldn't have. And Aversa, hovering above them on her nightmare, with a tome in her hands and the glow of dark magic about her…

“Sumia, put me down and get to the front. They need you at the head of the charge, and you'll maneuver better if you’re not riding double.” Her voice must not have betrayed her plan, or perhaps Sumia could see how badly she was needed to hold back the wave from their wounded fighters and mages. She gently lowered Achilles to the ground, and with an eager “yes sir!” she sent her pegasus dashing forward, laying about her with her lance in a whirlwind of death for the risen foolish enough to get within range. Achilles hesitated a moment, making sure no one was looking at her closely enough to stop what she was about to do. Her hands shook as she pulled the small bag out of her coat for the last time.

“Quit hesitating, you coward,” she murmured to herself, ripping the lacing open heedless of its proper fastening. “The last one didn't kill you, you just wanted it to.”

The sensation when she forced the last mana drop down her throat was indescribable, her vision whiting out for a moment, and she barely gave it time to settle before focusing on Aversa. She was only going to get one shot at this, but she could damn well give it everything she had. Her companions had been willing to give the same to her, and she could return nothing less. With the last of everything that was in her, she called to mind the wild rush of storm winds and howling gales. She reached out for the clouds, still murderously black, and with the winds whipped them into a frenzy, pulling the lightning from them. The sky became a second battleground, with winds as fierce as swords, with lightning that bit more viciously than any wyvern, and no one in it was safe. But all of the flyers had been grounded, were safe. All but Aversa. Her last thought, tinged with more satisfaction than she’d expected, was “try to focus on your casting through that” before everything went black.

* * *

There were muffled voices in the distance, slipping away from her like fog from her hands.

“-badly hurt? Will she be-”

“-please, please, Achilles, I can’t-”

“-severe damage, and she may never recover full use-”

They were a blur. But she knew those voices, would follow them anywhere. If she could just follow them back…

“She's awake! Achilles, are you with us?” She blinked her eyes open to see Chrom hovering over her, looking anxious and concerned.

“Sit down now, don't crowd her. And don't you try to get up!” Maribelle pushed Chrom back into his seat with one hand, and held Achilles down with the other. To Achilles’ surprise, it worked. She felt as weak as a newborn kitten. “Do you even know what you did?!” Maribelle snapped. She sounded in fine form today, snippy and furious as though she’d been seated next to an unsuitable earl at a garden party, but Achilles had known her long enough by now to recognize that the difference between concerned angry and actually angry was a fine line when it came to Maribelle.

“Got trampled by a pegasus?” she tried.

“You!” Maribelle stabbed her in the chest with a finger. “You inconsiderate, incompetent, bumbling, bufoonish cad, you burnt out your mana channels with that little stunt. All of them! You are very lucky to be alive. Frankly I don't even know how you are! And you'll be very lucky if you can ever do more with your magic again than light a candle. The only other time I've ever seen such complete damage to the system was in mana drop addicts! I don't suppose you would know anything about that, would you?”

“Well, I'm definitely not a mana drop addict.” There was nothing about that experience she’d found remotely tempting to repeat.

“I should hope not, because if ever you take them again after that, they will definitely kill you. So I'll just hang onto that bag I found in your coat pocket, shall I?” Maribelle asked pointedly. Achilles only smiled fondly and leaned up to kiss her on the cheek.

“Sorry for worrying you.”

Chrom smiled and leaned in to kiss Maribelle’s other cheek.

“Thank you for taking care of her.”

“Oh! Well I never!” Maribelle had gone pink, although she wasn't quite able to keep a smile from showing at the corners of her mouth. “What kind of deplorable behavior! Clearly, you’re feeling better than I thought, and you don’t need me working my fingers to the bone to look after you anymore. Chrom, the patient is all yours.” She flounced out of the infirmary hurriedly, trying and failing to hide her smile, Chrom still smiling after her.

“She was by your side the whole, waiting for you to wake up.”

“I'm not surprised. You should really marry her instead of me, you know.”

“Achilles, if you think for one minute that I'm letting you out of my sight after that...”

“Worth a shot.” It was an old argument, and Achilles wasn’t eager to retread it. She cautiously tried to sit up, going slowly enough to keep her head from spinning. “How long was I out?”

“You've been asleep for three days.” Chrom's face fell. “You missed Emmeryn's funeral. I'm sorry.”

“No, I'm sorry.” She reached out blindly, and felt Chrom catch her hand. “I should have been there for you.”

“You shouldn't-” His voice caught, roughly. “Achilles… Why? You almost died.”

“I don't regret it,” she said firmly. “If the choice was between going down to give you a chance, or watching you all die for me, then there's no choice there.”

“Just… promise me you won't do it again. Please.” He clasped her hand. “I don't know what I'd do if I lost you.”

“Chrom, you know I can't make that promise,” she said gently. “I'm your tactician, and that means making the hard choices. If it comes down to me, or all of you again… like I said, that's no choice.”

“Then make me a different promise,” he said gently, dropping to one knee. “I know we agreed to wait until the war was over, so it wouldn’t look improper, so things would be more settled. But this whole time, when I thought I'd lost you, when I was still afraid we were going to lose you… All I could think of was how much I regretted not having done this.” He pulled a small box out of his pocket, one that had clearly been carried around for a while. “I don't care about what it looks like anymore, and I don't care about the danger or the uncertainty. All I care about is knowing that I made you the promise that matters to me more than anything. Achilles, will you marry me?”

“Yes, yes of course I will.” Achilles held out a shaking hand for the ring he slipped onto her finger. “I don't know what the future might hold, but I know for certain that I want to go through it at your side.” He smiled up at her, that same smile that had been the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes in a grassy field she didn't recognize, the smile she would have followed to the ends of the earth. “Can I still be your tactician even if we're married?”

“Yes. I don't care what anyone says about favoritism, you've more than proved yourself worthy of the post ten times over, and if the old buzzards in the council want to grumble about it, then so be it,” Chrom said firmly. He took her hands, squeezed them tight.

Achilles thought about Emmeryn falling, how her heart stopped and her throat closed as she watched, helpless, and about the way Chrom was even now clutching her hands so tightly, as if to keep her from falling out of his grasp.

“I’m sorry.” She murmured quietly. To Emmeryn, to him, maybe even to herself.

“Achilles?” Chrom asked, leaning in. “What was that?”

“I was thinking...” she said slowly, as the clouds rolled away and the sun finally came out again, “That we have a lot ahead of us. And that I want to spend all of it by your side.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah I know no one out here wants to read OCxChrom fics but I do what I want.
> 
> Don’t look at the timelines here too closely because I don’t know how long it’s been since the last war/Gangrel's coronation/etc and I refuse to find out. 
> 
> Also if it looks like everyone is low key flirting with everyone else, it’s because they are. If you want to read everyone’s support conversations then you just have to accept the fact that the shepherds are all poly now and you’re gonna like it.


	2. Chapter 2

It was late, and Achilles paced steadily up and down a secluded hall, Lucina held in her arms, wailing loudly enough to ring off the marble. Occasionally Achilles would try gently bouncing her, which seemed to work for Sumia every time she held the “precious little darling” but not for her.

“Maybe I shouldn't have picked a place with such good acoustics, huh?” Achilles murmured ruefully. “But it’s far away from… well, everything. Go ahead and scream if you want. Gods know I want to scream sometimes too. At least you won't wake anyone else up here.”

Chrom was better at this than her, always ready with a smile and a silly game that seemed to make the baby stop crying as if by magic. He was a natural at it, explaining with a laugh “when you’re a prince, every time you go out, women always want you to hold their babies, and bless them sometimes. You get the hang of it after a while. After all, it looks pretty bad when the prince of Ylisse makes babies cry!”

But later, in a different conversation, he'd mentioned something about how he and Em had spent a lot of time looking after Lissa when she was a baby. Just an off-handed comment, showing he hadn't even thought twice about it, that it hadn't occurred to him that a boy his age should never have had to take up the mantle of parental neglect. And yet, he was so determined to be a good father, not to repeat the mistakes his own had made. To give Lucina the childhood he hadn't had a chance at. He loved her so much, looking at her like she was the center of the world every time he held her.

Achilles hadn’t been so sure about being a mother, at first. Not until the first time she held Lucina, and suddenly there was nothing more important in the world than protecting this tiny creature in her arms. She’d snarled like a wild beast at the healer who’d tried to take Lucina away to clean her up. For days, the only other person she’d let hold her was Chrom. He had been the only other person who looked at her with the same sense of wonder and terror, like he’d just realized that he would do anything to protect her and that it would never be enough.

Achilles found herself humming absently, the only lullaby she knew, as though the song had been summoned by the thought, and stopped abruptly. Lucina, who had quieted down to uneasy whimpering, began to wind herself up into full-fledged wailing again.

“Oh no, sweetheart, you want your dad for that too,” Achilles said guiltily. She still spoke with a faint rasp in her throat that had never fully healed since she’d nearly burnt a hole through it with too many mana drops. It certainly hadn’t improved her already unimpressive singing voice.

Chrom sang their daughter Ylissean lullabies, about flocks of sheep guided safely home, or the stars coming out to play with the moon, and Lucina always drifted blissfully off to sleep cradled against his chest. Achilles had done the same thing more than once, fallen asleep with her head resting on Chrom's chest and the sound of his heartbeat and the low murmur of his voice in her ears.

“You don't want to listen to a washed up merc sing,” Achilles tried to convince Lucina. “You're too young for most of the songs I know anyway. Maribelle would kill me if I taught you The Lay Of The Rosy Maiden.” The steadily increasing volume of Lucina's cries said otherwise. Clearly, it either had to be the lullaby, or one of the songs that would give Maribelle hysterics, even if Lucina was probably still too young to understand the words. With a rueful sigh, Achilles began to sing again, low and soft.

_Little baby, don’t you cry,_

_Here’s your mama’s lullaby,_

_Diamond bracelets, golden rings,_

_Sleep and dream of better things._

Lucina's cries stilled again, looking up at her mother with solemn eyes. Achilles had never been able to shake the feeling that there was something beyond the brand in them, the wisdom of an old soul perhaps.

“Oh, I think I know that one.” Achilles jumped at the soft voice behind her, Lucina giving a grumpy complaint when she was jolted by the motion.

“Olivia! Gods' all hells, you know you're the only who can sneak up on me, now _stop doing it_.” Olivia smiled as she walked around in front of Achilles, with the same soft footed tread that never made a sound unless she meant it to.

“You two are up late. Is someone having trouble sleeping?” She leaned in to smile at Lucina, jingling her bracelet playfully over the fretful baby, who gurgled and grabbed at the shiny toy.

“Yeah. She's gotten used to Chrom coming in and putting her to bed, and he's still stuck in a cabinet meeting, so she’s grumpy about not getting her goodnight from him.” It was the kind of thing Achilles was useless at, nothing to do with combat whatsoever. The council of nobles was arguing about guild taxation levies, the kind of discussion that involved a minute knowledge of tax law and exemptions for all the various types of crafts and goods, and it always made her head spin. Maribelle, with her positive glee for convoluted legal texts and loopholes (not to mention her knowledge of all the aristocrat political games which made up half the council debates) was with him now, and far better suited for it. She was glad Chrom had her at his back.

“Poor little thing, no wonder she’s grumpy. May I hold her?” Olivia held out her arms, and Achilles gently transferred Lucina to them. She gazed up at Olivia quietly, momentarily distracted from her fuss by the change of scenery. “What was that you were singing to her?”

“Uh.” Achilles hesitated, not wanting to admit that the only lullaby she knew was the one she'd heard camp followers singing to their babies. Olivia swayed gently, rocking Lucina back and forth to the rhythm of a simple dance step, and picked up the melody as though there was nothing unusual about it. Achilles hesitated for a moment and then tentatively joined in with the lyrics.

_I’ll give you the sky above,_

_I’ll give you always all my love,_

_Silk and velvet, tell me true,_

_Nothing’s worth as much as you._

_Someday I’ll give you everything,_

_But all I can do now is sing,_

_No matter what I have to do,_

_I’ll make a better life for you._

“Ah look, she's asleep at last.” Olivia smiled at Achilles. “Shall we take her back to bed?”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Here, this way.” She led Olivia down the halls, towards the royal suite. Sully and Stahl were on night watch tonight, the latter giving them a little salute as they passed by. Olivia laid Lucina gently down in the crib beside the massive, empty, bed.

“My mother used to sing it to me,” she whispered to Achilles, in answer to the unspoken question hanging in the air. She turned to leave, until Achilles caught her elbow gently.

“Olivia,” she said softly. “I… can’t sleep either.”

“Me neither,” said Olivia with a gentle smile, sitting down on the bed next to her. “Let’s wait up together then.”

* * *

It was past midnight when Chrom returned from his council meeting. He didn’t look surprised to see Olivia waiting with Achilles, any more than she was to see Maribelle still at his side. Achilles had half risen to greet him, when Chrom’s eyes met hers, and she sat back down again hard. It had been a long time since she’d last seen that look in Chrom’s eyes, but she recognized it all too clearly nonetheless.

“No,” she murmured, as though this was something she could refuse, something she could stop if she just failed to acknowledge it.

“Achilles? What’s wrong?” Olivia asked, putting a hand on her arm, looking back and forth between her and Chrom. She didn’t see it, Achilles realized. She saw Chrom and Maribelle, tired from a difficult council meeting that had run overlong, and probably gone badly. She hadn’t seen that look in Chrom’s eyes over too many tables in too many hastily assembled camps. She didn’t recognize that particular way that Chrom held himself when he was dead tired and hurting inside but he had to look brave for the others anyway. Or maybe she saw it but didn’t recognize it for what it was, not when it was so out of place. That was a look that belonged on a battlefield, not here and now, in their bedroom with the baby sleeping peacefully alongside.

Chrom sat down on the bed and looked at them with haunted eyes.

“What do you know about Walhart the Conqueror?” he asked quietly.

Beside them, for the first time in her young life, the sound of her father’s voice brought Lucina a sense of dread rather than warmth and comfort. She didn’t understand how or why, but she knew that something must be wrong if her father sounded like that. She whimpered and cried out until someone picked her up and held her, rocking her and singing quietly, so that she no longer had to hear the sound of her world about to fall apart.

* * *

Achilles had long since relearned how to fight without magic, practicing with the axe and the lance until she was as good with them as she was with the sword. (And if they were also weapons that were well suited to be used in the air, well, wouldn’t that be a coincidence if she happened to get her hands on a wyvern egg now that she knew they could be hand-raised.) After Lucina had been born, she’d rested of course, but as soon as she was able to be up and on her feet she’d returned to her daily exercises. No one had thought anything of it. Half the time she sparred with Chrom, or one of the other Shepherds, none of whom were the type to let a skill once learned go rusty.

She wondered if part of her always knew, that the peace wouldn’t last. She wondered if part of her was hoping for this, for the one thing she was good for. Marching out felt too familiar, felt a little too much like going home, and she tried not let herself think about that.

(She’d regret her wish for something else to focus on when it brought her an unknown twin sister who bore her name and her face, when it brought her Validar’s claim to be her father and the unsettling visions that came after it, and when it brought a young man who turned out to be a young woman, who turned out to be her daughter, grown and fleeing from a dark future that threatened to become their present. Now that she had three more life-overturning revelations not to think about, another little war against a bloodthirsty conqueror felt positively mundane. That was probably what Maribelle called an unhealthy coping mechanism, but she wasn’t thinking about that either.)

This time, Plegia was their tentative ally, in name at least, and in practice “so dreadfully sorry, but we are still recovering from the war and can not provide much. Only this force of ships, and a very limited complement of soldiers, just the ones who volunteered. We simply can not spare anything else from the rebuilding efforts.” Achilles had looked up at the half wing of wyvern riders who’d accompanied the soldiers, and wondered if she really saw one wave at her or if it was just wishful thinking.

Achilles had never had to lead a naval battle before. She learned then and there, looking at their resources, looking at the odds, and figuring out the way to tilt them in their favor. It was mad but she committed and didn’t look back anyway because the alternative was to throw her people into the war machine’s bloody mouth and buy victory with their blood, and she would die first. She played distraction, Chrom by her side, and there was fighting and killing and running, and they fired the ships and sent the Valmese navy death they never saw coming until it was too late. And then there was only blood and smoke and yelling, and an eternity before it was over, and it was over in the blink of an eye. Half their navy sacrificed to the fire, but all of Valm’s, and Valm’s ships had been full of soldiers when the fire took them.

There was still screaming, and it took far too long for her half-deafened ears to make her understand that she wasn’t hearing the screams of dying soldiers in pain anymore (the choice between fire and drowning was a terrible choice to make, and she was the one who’d sentenced them to it, but it was them or her own people and she would burn the entire world to keep her people safe.) This sound wasn’t human, but the battle-scream of a furious wyvern. Achilles was tired, covered in blood, covered in soot, responsible for the deaths of more people in that single battle than she thought she’d managed in the entire last war. She wanted Chrom to hold her and set the world back on its axis, wanted a bath, wanted to shut her eyes and sleep for a week. Her body was still off and running before her head had come to the conclusion that she should be.

The wyvern was crouched, grounded, wings mantled over something, and screaming at the Ylissean soldiers surrounding it, pikes out, to keep it from charging. But this one wasn’t going to charge, she could tell as she got closer. It was keeping something to itself like a hawk on a kill- no, she realized, as she got near enough to recognize it, to see the way it was only roaring and snapping at the people who were armed and armored like Ylissean infantry. It was protecting something.

She shoved her way through the pikemen and roared loud enough to rival the wyvern.

“Stand down every man of you and that’s an order!”

Every pike went down with a speed that she would have found gratifying if she hadn’t had more important things to worry about at the moment. The wyvern snapped at the air inches in front of her face, with a screeching growl like a panicked bandsaw. Several of the soldiers stepped forward with alarmed shouts, and she waved them back, never breaking eye contact with the wyvern in front of her.

“Steel, hey. I’m a friend. You remember me, right?” She wished she could say it was the stupidest thing she’d ever done, but Achille made her living taking risks and hoping they’d pay off, so holding out her hand to a furious wyvern didn’t even make the top ten.

For a moment, she really did think she was going to lose the hand. The wyvern was still snarling, but then the madly rolling eyes focused on her, and she felt the hot, dry, dragon’s breath wash over her as he breathed out, then in, taking in her scent. And then, all of a sudden, he butted his head up against her chest frantically, whimpering like a panicked dog.

“I’m gonna help, okay?” she promised him, giving his nose a brief scratch. “I need a healer, now!” she yelled, turning back to the crowd.

“Here!” Lissa pushed her way to the front, despite the efforts of several of the soldiers to stand between her and the rampaging wyvern. She was running, staff in hand, the way she always pelted at full speed towards anyone yelling for a healer. She didn’t even slow down when Steel mantled and roared again, determined that if Achilles called for a healer, she’d get one as fast as possible no matter how many wyverns were rampaging in the way. Achilles grabbed her hand as soon as she was close enough, holding it up the same way as the first time. Lissa didn’t resist, let Achilles shove her hand towards an angry wyvern’s jaws with fearless trust that her tactician, her sister, would never put her in harm’s way. “Steel, hey, this is a friend! She’s going to help.”

The wyvern sniffed briefly at Lissa’s hand and then leaned back, raising a wing so that the two of them could get to the man he’d been protecting. Lissa dropped to her knees next to him immediately, heedless of the pool of blood that immediately began soaking her skirts, her magic washing over him in a wave of gold light.

“Sir, are you awake? Can you hear me?” she asked, settling her hand on the mangled stump that had been his right arm.

“Ngh….barely.” His voice was little more than a quiet groan.

“That’s good! I’m a healer, and I’m here to help. I just need you to stay awake for me, okay?” Lissa had the best bedside manner of any of the Shepherds’ healers, a lilting cheerful tone that really did make you believe her when she told you it was going to be alright, even while you had an arrow sticking out of your side. “Can you keep talking for me, so I know you’re awake?”

“’t hurts.”

“Yeah, I bet it does.” Achilles knelt down on the other side, easing her hand under his remaining one carefully, as Lissa’s magic danced and sparked over it in the pattern that she recognized from experience as healing the little individual bones in the fingers. “Hey Cato. You know, this wasn’t exactly what I meant when I said come to Ylisse any time you wanted.” That got her an unfocused gaze, and a wry, if pained smile.

“Hey, ‘lissean.”

“You can’t keep calling me that, you know, we’re in Ylisse now. Everyone here’s Ylissean. And Lissa’s the one healing you too which makes it even more confusing when you slur it like that. No one’s going to know who you’re talking to.” That at least seemed to distract him from the pain for a moment, which was all to the good as far as Achilles was concerned. He glanced over at Lissa, her brow furrowed in concentration as her hands wove the golden light into a complex healing lattice, and then back to Achilles.

“Princess Lissa?”

“Yep!” Lissa answered. “The one and only. Princess, mage, healer extraordinaire, I’m the whole parcel!” She beamed down at him, her hands still going through the motions of the healing spell. “I’m about to heal your broken ribs, and it’s going to hurt a whole bunch for about ten seconds, but then you’ll feel a lot better. Be brave for me, okay?” Achilles had always wondered if Lissa knew just how much the people she healed were willing to endure for the sake of that smile and her gentle “Be brave for me, okay?”

Lissa set her hands on his chest and the golden light expanded out from them, glowing even more intensely. The warm light still didn’t manage to hide the way his face suddenly went as white as marble, teeth clenched in pain and his hand suddenly clenching around Achilles’. But when it was done, ten seconds and no longer just as Lissa had promised, his expression clearly showed relief and he seemed to breathe easier.

“Okay, and that’s all the big stuff out of the way. You did really well,” she said warmly. “Chrom always complains like a big baby when I heal his broken ribs! And it’s always his fault for doing something stupid to break them in the first place, so he doesn’t even have the high ground about it either.”

“Huh. Never thought I’d have the princess of Ylisse healing my broken ribs,” Cato said, still sounding a little dazed. Lissa could have that effect on people, and not just from the strength of her magic.

“Hey, why not? I’m more than just a cute face, you know! I also do elemental battle magic, handle logistics, and I make all my own medicines,” Lissa told him cheerfully, running one hand down her staff to pull more energy from it while the other swept over her patient in a wave of more subdued golden light. She glanced over at Achilles meaningfully.

“She does,” Achilles confirmed, nodding along. “She’s got this big old cauldron she drags along everywhere we go for brewing medicines in. You’ve never seen a happier pair than her and Stahl when they come back from a foraging trip, with a basket full of obscure weeds and mud up to their shoulders because they fell in a bog.”

“Achilles, I told you that was an accident! Snakesleen only grows in swamps, and how was I supposed to know that patch of grass wasn’t solid? And then Stahl is the taller one anyway, so it only made sense that he had to wade in and help me out.”

“Sure and that would be a perfectly good explanation if it had only happened once. Besides, I know for a fact that the fifth time was because you decided you wanted to beat Donnel in that frog catching competition.”

“How do you even know about that?!”

“A good tactician has her sources. And Donnel can’t keep his mouth shut after half a pint. I’ve never seen a man wax poetic like that about how many frogs a girl can catch before.”

“Aww Achilles, you’ll make me blush! Did he really say all that?”

Even after the big life threatening injuries were fixed, knitting torn muscle and skin back together still ached and burned while it was happening, and the constant pain of healing all the smaller injuries often seemed to be worse than the ten seconds of agony when a broken bone settled back in place. Lissa usually tried to distract her patients from the pain by telling silly stories about herself, and Achilles had started joining in once she figured out what was going on. People were generally startled enough to hear their princess and their steel-spined tactician arguing about ridiculous nonsense that they forgot all about the pain. If they could get Frederick in on it, they were a regular three-man show, even if poor Frederick never realized he was playing the straight man. As tactics went, it was a pretty good one, and Achilles wished she’d thought of it herself. She was always impressed by just how many of Lissa’s cheerful, seemingly effortless mannerisms, were actually her thoughtful way of helping people who were scared and in pain.

“Okay, and we’re all done!” Lissa pulled her hands away at last and brushed her hair off her forehead with her wrist in a practiced gesture, to avoid leaving a bloody smear on her face. “You’re going to need to take it easy for the next few days. I can’t put blood back after you lost it and you lost a lot. You’ll aggravate those injuries even after I healed them if you’re too rough with them, so I really mean it when I say take it easy. Bed rest and garden walks, okay? You seem like the kind of guy who appreciates gardens!”

“Take it easy, got it. Guess I wasn’t going to be doing much wyvern riding with this anyway.” He glanced down at the stump of his arm. Lissa had done her best to heal it over cleanly, but even she couldn’t regrow a lost limb.

“No, but you’ll never have to buy your own drinks in any tavern in Ylisse ever again,” Lissa told him cheerfully. Achilles always wondered how she seemed to know whether a patient needed her to smile and joke with them, or to hold their hand gently and tell them it was okay, but she trusted Lissa’s instinct for that sort of thing more than her own. And even she got the feeling that if they showed him any pity right now, something would break beyond even Lissa’s ability to repair.

“She’s right, if you just got an eyepatch too you’d be rolling in admirers. So with a perk like that, you pretty much have to take me up on my offer now,” she told him.

“Stay in Ylisse, huh?” he asked.

“And take up a position as head of our royal wyvern breeding program,” she said, for the pleasure of watching both his and Lissa’s face turn startled. “You’re the only one here who knows anything about raising and training them from the egg, after all. Can we get some eggs from Plegia? I bet we can, all the diplomacy we’re throwing around has to be good for something, finally. Oh the council is going to _hate_ this,” she added gleefully. “I can’t wait to be the one talking their ears off with reports about more details than they ever cared about, for once.”

“Achilles, I don’t know if you can do that, you hate council meetings,” Lissa protested. “Also they’ll try to force it to a vote and block you with a majority.”

“Then I’ll start doing it without asking the council first, what’s the point of marrying Chrom if I don’t abuse my power at least once? Half the councilors think I seduced him with my lascivious feminine wiles just for that anyway.”

“Gross, that’s my older brother you’re talking about!”

“I’m your sister I’m talking about too.”

“You don’t count! I’m already so traumatized from seeing you and Gaius in the kitchens that one time- the _kitchens_ Achilles, you ruined custard tarts for me-”

“She’s right though, you can’t put a Plegian who fought against you in the war in charge of a royal program to breed war mounts,” Cato said, his tone a bit too level. Like someone being offered an incredibly desirable treasure he didn’t expect to be allowed to keep, trying to convince himself he couldn’t take it in the first place so that he wouldn’t have to see it taken away.

“So they don’t have to be war mounts then. I’ll say they’re companions. You know, like those little dogs the women at court carry around? Wyverns are definitely the newest fashionable thing or whatever,” Achilles said, warming to her topic. “Hell, I’ll get one for Lucina and they can grow up together, she’ll love it. Lissa, how much cuter would her baby portraits be with a little baby wyvern beside her?”

“You’re right, the councilors _are_ going to hate that. They’ll say you’re endangering the future heir and probably keel over right at the table,” Lissa said, with the same tone of voice she used when Vaike challenged Chrom to a contest of arms right in the middle of a stuffy formal reception. That was the tone that meant she knew exactly how many feathers this was going to ruffle, and yet couldn’t look away because she still secretly wanted to see Vaike throw Chrom into the refreshment table in front of Lord Fatheringham.

“I’m not going to let you get arrested for treason because you feel sorry for me,” Cato said, clearly trying to head this off before it got serious enough that he could start to want it. Achilles ignored him and barreled through anyway, given that this was what half her tactics entailed and it had always worked so far. (Some of Chrom’s crustier old military advisors had grumbled that her tactics only won through luck and brute force, and they were half right. But hell that was war in a nutshell, anyone who wanted to pretend they won through anything other than force was either lying or a diplomat. The trick she’d mastered was finding exactly the right spot to apply the force.)

“They can’t arrest me, I think I’m technically the queen.”

“You _think_?” Good, that had apparently confused him enough that he forgot he was protesting.

“Achilles there’s nothing technical about it, I was there at your coronation,” Lissa pointed out. “It was kind of a big deal!” Achilles waved a hand at Lissa dismissively. At heart, she was always their tactician first and foremost. Being queen meant nothing except that she had a crown she never wore now.

“And I don’t feel sorry for you. I’ve been trying to get my own flight of wyverns for years, and no one will go along with it. Ylisseans are all too proud of their pegasi to consider other aerial options. And they’re very nice-” she added out of dogged, unrelenting loyalty to Sumia, “But you can’t really play-wrestle with a pegasus. At this point, if I ever want to get the wyvern program, ha, off the ground, I basically have to import someone from Plegia.” There was that wry smile again, finally. She’d wondered how long she was going to have to keep rattling on like this. Turned out Lissa’s tactics worked on more than just painful healings.

“Well, I guess I can’t get around it then,” he said, holding up his hand in surrender, and the thing inside her that pushed her to bare her teeth and keep fighting until she won purred in approval. Victory on any field was always sweet, all the more when it meant something.

“Nope,” she said with a grin. "I might have to ennoble you to keep the council from having a complete tantrum though, they already think Chrom spends too much time around commoners. How do you feel about being a duke, I think that’s the least fussy title. We probably have to sign some papers? Let’s go find Maribelle and ask her.” Oh the councilors would protest this all right, and she was already spoiling for the fight with them. This was hers now, just let them try.

“Achilles, you really can’t do this right now!” Lissa interrupted.

“And why not?” Achilles demanded. Her blood was up, she _was_ going to have this, and nothing was standing in her way.

“Because there’s still a war going on, remember?” she said.

“Of course I remember- Oh. Right, not a good time for diversion of resources. Have to win that first. We’ll talk logistics later then, but I’m still giving you a title before we go marching off to Valm, just in case I die,” Achilles decided.

“Well, I guess I’d probably better give you something in return, otherwise I really will think this is because you feel sorry for me. Help me up?” He held out his hand and she pulled him to his feet. Steel peered at the three of them, his head tilted at an angle to do so, and folded his wings at last with a pleased chirr, so they were no longer enclosed in the tent of them. Lissa brushed her skirts off, then cocked her head as she heard someone calling for her.

“A healer’s work is never done! Achilles, don’t adopt too many wyverns while I’m not around to keep an eye on you!” she said cheerfully, and then dashed off to help the next person.

“She’s a good kid,” Cato said as Steel shoved his head into his rider’s chest and nearly knocked him over in a show of anxious affection, until he wrapped his arm around the wyvern’s neck to hold himself steady. “Hey buddy, you did a good job out there.”

“Yeah. She is. She hates it when you call her that though,” Achilles said softly. “I hate that she’s had to grow up so fast.”

“That why you waited to ask until she was gone?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“I know. You didn’t ask so loud I’m surprised no one else is going ‘yeah Cato, how _did_ you lose the arm?’ Not your fault, by the way.”

“I wasn’t _going_ to ask.” (Not her fault, maybe, but her responsibility. She’d directed their aerial troops along with everyone else, told him where to go and sent him into harm’s way.)

“They started firing the cannons the second we got within range. Some clever asshole got the bright idea to start aiming up instead of out. I think they were more trying to keep us off them than hoping they could actually could hit us. But this piece of chain shot came flying out nowhere,” he mimed the twisting arc of it with his hand, the unpredictable way the two iron weights attached to each end of a chain would fly when fired out of a cannon at high speed, “hit my arm and wrapped around it, took it clean off. I think that’s when it got the ribs too, but I wasn’t really noticing the fine details at that point since I was trying to fly a wyvern one-handed. It was my own damn fault, I would have avoided it if I’d been flying higher. Lucky shot for them, bad luck for me.”

“Soldier’s luck,” Achilles groaned. “Hells.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a soldier too and how’s this for luck. Steel, hey.” He stopped scratching the wyvern’s head and clapped his hand on Achilles’ shoulder. “This is your new rider.”

“What?” Achilles looked at him shock. “I didn’t- I wasn’t-”

“I know you weren’t, that’s why I’m doing it. This guy’s gonna need more exercise than I can give him if I’m spending my time taking garden walks and figuring out what dukes are supposed to do.”

“I can’t-”

“Achilles. He’s a war dragon,” he said softly. “You’re going to war. You’ll need him more than I do.” He smiled, letting her see the melancholy that he wasn’t quite hidden behind the wry twist of his mouth. “We both know I’m not going to be riding a war dragon anymore after this. So let me do this, and let me pretend it’s my choice to give him up, instead of the only choice.”

“Okay,” she said softly. He reached up to pat Steel’s nose one last time, and then pulled his hand away, leaving her the only one touching the wyvern.

“Take care of him, okay? He’s been a good friend. Only one I had, sometimes.”

“This isn’t goodbye. Not for him, and not for me,” she said firmly. “We’re both coming back. We’ll defeat Walhart and then I’ll come pester you endlessly about baby wyverns.”

“I’m looking forward to it. By the time you get back, maybe I’ll have figured out how to get teacup wyverns or something, and all your nobles will be carrying those around instead.”

“I’m holding you to that.”

“Then you’d better come back and make sure I do. Now, are you taking this guy for a flight, or what?”

“I’m...” She looked up wonderingly at Steel. “I’ve never actually flown a wyvern before.”

“It’s easy, the hardest part’s getting up in the saddle. Don’t expect me to give you a hand up though.”

“Ha.” She scrambled up into the saddle, so much higher off the ground than sitting atop a pegasus, and took the reins. Slapped them against Steel’s neck and felt his muscles bunch underneath her, as he crouched, then leaped into the air. Saw Cato lifting a hand to his eyes, to shield them from the cloud of dust kicked up by his wings, and then they were rising, and he was right, it _was_ easy, it was like remembering how to do something she’d known all her life, and had somehow forgotten she knew. The wyvern turned into the wind, and she leaned with him, then he spread his wings and soared.

Below her, on the ground, there was still a war waiting. She knew better than to think that one decisive victory would stop the Valmese war machine. There was a mystery waiting for her, a sister she’d never known and a father with some sinister purpose.

But her family, her _real_ family, waited down there too. Her daughters, her husband, her Shepherds ( _her_ people, their number maybe increased by one now.) Looking small and fragile below her, the people she would fight for, die for, but most importantly live for.

The war loomed before them, but Achilles had faced down its teeth before and she would do so again. Some dark mystery lurked below, but that too, they’d drag into the light. Whatever there was that threatened her people, they’d face it, and defeat it, together.

No matter what she had to do, she’d make a better world for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In answer to the question you’re no doubt dying to ask, yes, that WAS a lot of spilled ink to justify why I reclassed my tactician into a wyvern rider. I regret nothing. As a fellblood, Achilles has a lot more affinity for dragons than most people, and it comes out in a tendency to be possessive of what she considers hers, a little too aggressive in a fight, and thinking wyverns are adorable. (She and Cherche have bonded over this.)
> 
> Yes, I know the song lyrics are clunky and don’t scan as well as they could, and I do not care. I have spent exactly as much time making them reasonably not awful as I wanted to and I refuse to spend a second more. There’s a reason I write fanfic and not songs. 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who left and/or will leave comments and kudos on this little fic of mine! They brighten my day every time I see them.


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